head to head · open source
CloakBrowser vs zendriver
CloakBrowser has 31,882 GitHub stars, 2,648 forks, 237 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. zendriver has 1,450 stars, 108 forks, 57 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. CloakBrowser leads on adoption by 2,099% (31,882 vs 1,450 stars). CloakBrowser is written in Python under MIT; zendriver is written in Python under AGPL-3.0. CloakBrowser has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, zendriver 7%. zendriver was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 4 topic tags (bot-detection, browser-automation, cloudflare, cloudflare-bypass), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| CloakBrowser | zendriver | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 1.4K |
| License | MIT | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-29 | 2026-10-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.6K | ⑂ 108 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick CloakBrowser if
- You weight community size — 32K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick zendriver if
- You want the zendriver feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and zendriver fits your workflow better
About CloakBrowser
CloakBrowser is a stealth Chromium build for Python and JavaScript teams that need browser automation to survive bot detection systems, aimed at scraping and AI agent engineers who want to replace Playwright or Puppeteer without rewriting their code.
read the full CloakBrowser overview →
About zendriver
Zendriver is a Python framework for undetectable, asynchronous web scraping and browser automation that drives a real Chrome instance over the Chrome DevTools Protocol instead of Selenium or WebDriver.
read the full zendriver overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is CloakBrowser or zendriver more popular?
CloakBrowser has 31,882 GitHub stars and zendriver has 1,450. CloakBrowser has the larger community by that measure.
Are CloakBrowser and zendriver free?
Both are open source. CloakBrowser is licensed under MIT and zendriver under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between CloakBrowser and zendriver?
CloakBrowser is written in Python and zendriver in Python. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, CloakBrowser or zendriver?
Choose CloakBrowser if you want the larger community (31,882 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose zendriver if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.